The ‘other sort’, I mean in cases
where the ‘translater’ [sic] is definitely making a new poem, falls simply in
the domain of original writing

(Ezra
Pound).

If
there is a difference between the writing of a translation and the writing of
so-called original works, that difference is not one of rhythm but of
expectation. Both cases actually involve a similar rhythm, a promise of meaning
and representation, an opening and closing of mouths, the movements of a tongue
calling out to an ear in the dark. A pair of lips searching for another. The
very process of translation, the process of searching for the right words and
syntax (or at least the best available words and syntax), the process of trying
to capture and recreate the tone and feel of a text in a second tongue—this
process creates—better yet: this process becomes—a generative machine very much
analogous to the machinery of the production of the first text: the mechanisms,
the gears, the nuts and bolts of writing the text otherwise known as the
original. Analogous machinery, different expectations.

Ever
since I began translating the work of the Argentine Ricardo Piglia, about
twenty years ago, the author and I have maintained an ongoing conversation
about translation, a conversation that has included correspondence, faxes at
first, emails after a while, and a series of recorded conversations that we have
since had transcribed. From early on I have kept a translation Notebook, in
which I have jotted down questions, problems of translation, difficult words or
terms, unusual phrasing, parts of the text where there is no equivalence in the
other language, ambiguities, situations with more than one possible interpretation,
possible solutions, options. Words or sentences in both languages (or in three,
sometimes), one on top of the other, to hear echoes, outline similarities,
highlight differences. Variations of differing verb tenses or agreements, the fusing
of two sentences into one, sardonic cacophonies, alliterations, double
entendres. References or allusions that require further research, topics and
subjects for future inquiry, reflections about the process. Notebooks and small
cassettes with recorded interviews: twenty years of work documenting a nearly
invisible scene: the task of the Piglian translator.

When
I translated Ricardo Piglia’s 1992 La
ciudad ausente I felt, at times, as if my work as a translator was a direct
and natural projection of the machine at the center of the novel, with its
ceaseless output of stories that are re-workings and re-combinations of other
stories, in turn reproduced and circulated throughout a city somehow composed of
the stories themselves.(1) A mechanism of narrating (una máquina de
narrar) as if projected from the original itself, though clearly of an “other
sort.” All my work at the time seemed to originate at the machine at the center
of the novel. Macedonio’s machine: a narrating machine conceptually created,
more or less, in the early twentieth century by Macedonio Fernández. Even my
recorded conversations with the author while translating La ciudad ausente seemed directly and organically connected to the
novel and the recordings of Macedonio’s machine.

Likewise,
when I translated “Brief Stories” from Piglia’s 1988 Prisión perpetua [Perpetual Prison], I experienced a kind of
contagion of the very mechanism (of the very machinery) of the production of
the writing. A productive contagion, but a contagion nonetheless: errant,
unpredictable. Variants, variations, which turned out to be both different and
the same as the ones in the original. How can one text be more than one text?
How can a text be itself and another at the same time? The scene of translation
reveals what readers intuit. The real story of the task of the Piglian
translator, for me, goes back to the “Brief Stories” in Perpetual Prison.

[What
happens when one belongs to a secondary culture? What happens when one writes
in a marginal tongue? These are the questions that Gombrowicz explores in his Diary
(Notebooks), where Argentine culture serves as a laboratory to test his hypotheses…
On this matter Borges and Gombrowicz are very close.]

[Border peoples who have to
navigate between two histories, in two times and often in two tongues. A
dispersed and fractured national culture in tension with a dominant tradition
of high foreign exchange. For Borges (and for Gombrowicz) this uncertain place
allows for a specific use of their cultural inheritance: mechanisms of
falsification, a temptation to steal, translation as plagiarism, mixtures,
combinations of registers, the intermingling of filiations. This, then, would
be the Argentine tradition.]

The
salient element, for our discussion here, is the phrase “translation as
plagiarism.” Like Borges before him—as well as Gombrowicz and Roberto Arlt, in
a crossing of writers and genres already paradigmatic in his work—Piglia not
only does not deny that translation is a kind of plagiarism, he in fact values
translation precisely because of its intrinsic appropriations and
transformations. Similar to other mechanisms of falsification and theft,
“translation as plagiarism” is seen as having the potential to produce an
intermingling, a mixture that de-purifies, even as it reproduces. A mixture
that stains, a corroding contagion that mongrelizes literature. The concept and
practice of mistranslation—a concept and practice that, along with misreading,
are at the core of literature, its creation as well as its transmission.
Especially in Latin America.

But
outside Latin America, how should one read Latin America’s misreadings? How
does a literary tradition, like Argentina’s, one that is formed and crossed by
so many travelers and foreigners, a tradition with so many translations and
rewritings—how does such a tradition travel abroad, beyond its own borders? How
do you translate a mistranslation? The question is the value and potential of
“translation as plagiarism” in Latin American literature, as well as how that
value and potential might travel, how they might be translated into English.

II

A
few years ago I had the opportunity to translate a text by Ricardo Piglia for
an issue of Words Without Borders. We
selected “Brief Stories,” a series of micro-narratives from Piglia’s Prisión perpetua. The series is composed
of short, interconnected stories that share a common style. Each micro-story
begins with the formulation “Había una o un…” [There was a…]. All the stories are
set in the U.S. Each micro-story is concise; as a group, the pace is fast and
efficient, accelerating toward the end, as each story becomes briefer, more
economical, microscopic.

Prisión perpetua is a kind of bildungsroman of
Piglia’s explicit double, Emilio Renzi.(3) Among other things, the novella
narrates the beginnings of Renzi’s writing, in the form of the oft-mentioned
Diary that the author has been working on for over fifty years. The novella
also recounts Renzi’s first meetings with Steve Ratliff, a very influential
character in Renzi’s early development as a writer. In the context of Prisión perpetua, the micro-narratives
that would become “Brief Stories” appear as a narrative exercise of sorts, as
Emilio Renzi—and Piglia with him—seem to be experimenting with different ways
to tell stories. Renzi is trying to tell the story of his mentor Steve Ratliff,
presented as a kind of literary father figure to the aspiring, young writer.
The micro-narratives in Prisión perpetua
are stories that Steve Ratliff tells Renzi (according to Renzi), which Renzi in
turn tells us, as we read them (in the original). In the translation, the
authorship is altered, Emilio Renzi and Steve Ratliff fade from the picture. In
the translation of the “Brief Stories” by itself, without the original
narrative framework provided by the novella, Renzi and Ratliff are reabsorbed,
so to speak, into Piglia’s authorial function. The text appears in Words Without Borders simply as
micro-stories by Ricardo Piglia, in translation.

The
context of the micro-stories, so important in the original, is in essence nearly
impossible to translate. Translating a fragment (“Brief Stories”) from a larger
text (Prisión perpetua) changes the
fragment, even before one changes languages. In the original, immediately
before the “Brief Stories” appear, Renzi tells us that Ratliff had shown him
parts of, and was always talking to him about a work in progress to which Ratliff
had dedicated much of his life. Right before the “Brief Stories” appear, Renzi says:
“La novela de Steve ha terminado por formar parte de
mi propio pasado. Cuando escribo tengo siempre la impresión de estar contando
su historia, como si todos los relatos fueran versiones de ese relato
interminable” [Steve’s
novel has ended up forming part of my own past. When I write I always have the
impression that I am telling his story, as if all the stories were a version of
that one endless story] (42). Behind
the micro-stories of Prisión perpetua
there is an imagined text, a conceptual and nearly invisible pre-text: Steve
Ratliff’s novel in progress to which Renzi alludes, and which Renzi is trying,
through variants and variations, to tell in his own text—which is actually
Piglia’s text, Prisión perpetua. As
if they were stories in search of a style and a form: the style and form found
in Piglia’s book.

But
the experimentation with the narrative frames in the original is not carried
over in the translation. The fragment that is essential to the larger structure
of the original is deconstructed by the very virtue of its fragmentation. The
doubling of the authorial figures, the multiple readings and retellings, and
the various narrative frames are necessarily absent from the fragmentary “Brief
Stories.” Still, I felt it was my task to try to write this—the style and form
for which Renzi searches in the micro-stories—into my translation. Although this
complexity would not appear in Words
Without Borders—although this complexity would remain nearly invisible—I
very much wanted to find a way to include the conceptual framework of the original
“Brief Stories” in my version of the text. (4)

It
should also be noted that one of the more curious aspects of Prisión perpetua is that Renzi tells us
that he is speaking in English, although what we read in the original is in
Spanish. This is more than just a curious aside, especially for the translator
of the text into English. Even before being translated out of Spanish, the novella
presents, for a moment, as an issue of potential literature: the original in
Spanish reads like a text removed from its own language, as if it had already
been translated, one imagines, from English to Spanish—seemingly already
anticipating its translation into English. In other words, there is an invisible
translation in (or behind) Prisión
perpetua, which can only be made visible (even partially visible) in its
eventual future translation. In this sense, in Prisión perpetua, like in other texts by Piglia, Renzi leans toward
English. The contagion—for the translator—is already there.

“Brief
Stories,” then, is a series of interwoven micro-stories, all beginning with the
same formulation: “There was a woman (or a man), who…” A woman reads a book
(the I-Ching) to make decisions in
her life, from the smallest to the most radical. A fake psychiatrist who runs a
suicide hotline in New York receives calls from throughout the country, and records
his patients’ messages. A convict who has just gotten out of jail, and occasionally
makes anonymous phone calls to a nighttime suicide prevention line in New York.
A recovering alcoholic who breaks into his friends’ houses at night, and
receives their phone calls the next day telling him that they’ve been robbed. And
so on. In principle, any one of the succeeding stories could fit in one or more
of the narratives that precede it. A character’s voice could be a message on
the fake psychiatrist’s recording machine, or a character in the mad plot of
the woman who reads the I-Ching to
know how to act in her life, and so on. The brief stories unfold as a
minimizing series, like Chinese boxes or Russian dolls, each flowing organically
from the initial story line.

When
I did the translation something strange happened. I finished writing the
translation of the “Brief Stories” taken from Prisión perpetua, but I didn’t stop. I continued writing other
stories, in the same style, with the same form (There was a woman or a man
who…). Stories that, as I thought at the time, could very well have been—could
very well be—in Perpetual Prison.
Except they weren’t. Toward the end of the translation there was a break, or a
leap, and something happened and suddenly I felt that rewriting those stories,
that writing a translation of those stories, could mean something else. That rewriting
meant something else.

III

To
try to explain, I go back to my translation journal and find one of the entries
from the time, when I was working on these micro-narratives. The Notebook is in
Spanish; I quote part of the relevant entry here, in translation:

Dated January 11, 2003, the entry
reads:

Last
night I dreamt with one of the brief stories from Perpetual Prison. In the dream I had to finish translating it, the deadline for the electronic submission
was approaching and I hadn’t finished yet, something was impeding my progress.
Literally, in the dream, I couldn’t see it. I was sitting in front of my
computer but I couldn’t see the screen, it
was all a blur. I could tell there was a lot of anxiety, even in the dream
I was aware of this. Then something happened, I don’t know how to explain it,
it was the same dream but something had changed. It happens often enough.
Awakened by an apnea and back, perhaps. Or maybe one of the cats… In any case,
I was still in front of the computer but now the translation was nearly
finished, I could see the words clearly on the screen, There was a woman, There was a psychiatrist, There was a convict,
and so on. It was the translation I had written the day before, but it wasn’t
the translation I had written the day before. Some phrases were identical, I
realized when I woke up. There were several
possible futures, The book told her the way, All the stories revolved around
a pivotal point… But the translation was longer than the original, even though
I was translating (even though I am translating) into English. The efficacy of
the syntax, the concise lexicon, a drive for directness: a new problem.

There’s
a limit to the number of words you can submit to the journal. What can I do?
The output has been altered. Something has happened, a surprise, a ceaseless
flow, or nearly so. I pressed the down arrow key and the text kept appearing,
page after page, an apparent infinite scrolling
down of brief stories, all connected, all with the same beginning, There was a woman who… There was a man who…

The
entry continues:

When
I awoke this morning, instead of the usual headache before coffee, a peaceful
contentment I cannot explain. As if a serious problem had suddenly been lifted.
But there was no problem. Just a normal translation day, books and pens, dictionaries
spread open on the kitchen table. Finish the task, get it done before winter
break ends. How can I understand the solution, if I’m not conscious of the
problem? I awoke this morning with the solution, even though I never had the
problem. The other sort.

“I
have the solution,” I read in my notebook, “the problem has been resolved. I
have a visible solution to an invisible problem.”(5)

The
next few pages of the journal contain fragments from the translation, different
options for various turns of phrases, challenging words or expressions that
seemed fixed in Spanish, imperfect options, more questions. And then the “Brief
Stories” begin. But instead of the interconnected stories from Perpetual Prison, there are others. For
example: “There was a university student who had a secret job with the National
Security Agency, three blocks from campus….” Or: “There was a Latin American
professor who spent hours watching television at night….” And: “There was an
architect who worked only with landscapes, he was an expert with outdoor
designs, but he couldn’t picture the interior of a house to save his life…” (Problems of Translation January 13, 2003).(6)
And so on.

IV

The
brief stories of the translator who dreams, I thought. Or perhaps: Other
options for a possible translation. But these have remained invisible. Almost
invisible. The brief stories of the translator are like that, even if they are
in another language: both like and not like those of the author, they have the
same form, the same style and tone, but the characters are different. Even when
the situations are analogous, the implications point elsewhere. In the end,
none of these other brief stories were included in the submission to Words Without Borders. The question of
ethics seemed relevant to the task at hand, even dealing with a translation of
“translation as plagiarism.”

And
so the other, additional brief stories, those created by the imaginary
machinery of translation—the ones that coincide with the style and form of the micro-stories
in Prisión perpetua but are not
there—remain in a notebook back home. At the time, it seemed strange, to use
the writing of a translation to write stories not in the original, but whose
concept somehow remained loyal to the concept of that original. Now I think
that this is something that always happens with translation, at least
potentially. When the machinery of the translation becomes a narrating machine.
The task of the translation machine is to write the same text, in another
tongue. But once the machine is running, once the translator has caught on to
the movement of the prose—the rhythm if not the expectation—then of course. Once
it is running, the machine can, potentially, continue its output beyond the
last period at the end of the original (más allá del punto final). The “other
sort” would begin—the other text begins—after the last period at the end (más
allá del punto final) of the original. I believe my experience writing the
translation of “Brief Stories” can happen with any translation. Why be faithful
to the period at the end of the original if the concept of the original
encourages the narrative machine to continue?(7)

V

Because
the scene of translation almost always remains invisible, the unusual creative
and scholarly process that takes place within its borders often remains
unknown, and unexplored. The scene of translation emerges as a third space, seemingly
empty, in between languages and texts, suspected—and suspect.(8) But
something does happen in that scene, there is a potential in the scene of
translation that deserves to be unveiled: something akin to contagion. The
contagion of translation; translation as contagion. George Steiner reports that,
“Writers have ceased from translation, sometimes too late, because the inhaled
voice of the foreign text had come to choke their own” (195). Steiner is
warning of the risk that accompanies translation when the “hermeneutic act”
fails to “compensate” the original, and does not properly “seek to equalize”
the translation with the original (196-197). But what if the translator doesn’t
cease, even after another voice has been inhaled?

Piglia
talks about translation as plagiarism, which—for him, for Argentine
literature—has everything to do with Borges and Arlt and a poetics of
appropriating and diverting and transforming from a corner of the globe, in
South America, as a way to imagine a nation and its literature. I think of translation
as contagion, with as much candor as possible, because it has happened, once or
twice, that I have read back and been unable to determine which one, exactly,
wrote the text in question. The original takes on another life in the
translation, just as much as the translation would not exist without the
original. As Derrida says, referring to Benjamin’s “The Task of the
Translator”: “If the translation is indebted to the original (this is its task,
its debt [Aufgabe]), it is because
already the original is indebted to the coming translation” (“Roundtable on
Translation” 153). (9)

Translation
as plagiarism, translation as contagion. The task of the Piglian translator. I
would like to cite another entry from my Problems
of Translation Notebooks. This one, too, involves the translation of “Brief
Stories.” The recordings in the entry refer to the conversations that I have
had with the author about translation over the years, which I mentioned near
the start of this essay. The journal entry reads:

There’s
a break, a blank space, and then: As if everything was captured (contained?) in
that microscopic recording: everything: the original, its translations, every
step between one and the other, all the variants and versions essayed along the
way, the potentiality of the scene of translation, a nearly invisible node in a
microscopic recording where, for a moment, everything was (everything seemed
and hence everything was) possible, the options irremediably left behind along the way and eventually abandoned at the end, at the
point at which the translator, by definition, must choose one of several
possibilities, and translating (that is: choosing, selecting) erase everything
else and return to (fall into?) his, her inevitable and also expected
invisibility.(10)

I
read and work on the transcribed recordings and think about the micro-cassettes
spinning in a tiny tape recorder while we were talking. They fit inside a small
box, all of them, in my basement, tiny really, the micro-cassettes with the
stories in translation and the stories about translation and the spoken novel,
unpublished as of yet. The box does not look like what it is, on the lid there
is an engraved mounted knight, it used to be a playing card box. Now it holds
the finite, rolled-up tape recordings.(11) The machine we used for the
recordings—a small, handheld Sony I bought as a graduate student, when I first
started—does not work anymore. There is nowhere to get it fixed. They do not
make the replacements or the parts anymore. Someday someone will need to invent
a new machine to listen to the stories all over again. Until then, there is
only this: handwritten notes in college-ruled composition notebooks. The “other
sort.”

Notes

(1). The Absent City was published in English
in 2000. I explore the idea of the translator of La ciudad ausente as a natural extension of the narrating-translation
machine at the center of the novel in “Traducir a Piglia.”

(2).
“¿Existe la novela argentina?” could also be translated as “Is There Such a
Thing as an Argentine Novel?”

(7).
Commentary, as critics have noted, can serve as this sort of supplement, too.
Philip E. Lewis, for example, states, “Commentary supplies the translation by
doing other than translation. In the wake of translation, the mission of
commentary is to translate in difference” (275).

(8).
Spivak refers to the “spacy emptiness” of translation, within which the
experience of alterity that is translation can ultimately occur (370).

(9).
In this same section of the “Roundtable on Translation,” Derrida adds:
“Translation is writing: that is, it is not translation only in the sense of
transcription. It is a productive writing called forth by the original text”
(153).